by Rick Partlow
Perry was on a stage at the front of the conference room, a meter above the main floor where we sat, and she paced across the five-meter stretch of platform, hands clasped at the small of her back, eyes fixed on the floor ahead of her.
“Anyone else?” she asked. “Anyone know what the last problem is, what might have been the worst failing of the training mission?”
Chang’s hand went up and she rose, coming to attention, not waiting for Perry to call on her.
“Ma’am,” she said, her voice much steadier and more confident than the others had been, “once our platoon leadership had been compromised, the chain of command fell apart. No one wanted to be the one to take charge and make a decision.” She paused, then seemed to remember the proper etiquette of addressing the officer and added a final, “ma’am.”
“Very good, Cadet Chang,” Perry acknowledged. “And yet you did, taking command of the platoon out of your turn, not waiting for the others ahead of you to do so. Why was that?”
“Ma’am,” she said, and her eyes flickered toward me, “Cadet Alvarez suggested we didn’t have time to wait for the others to realize the leadership structure was compromised, and recommended I take control of the platoon, ma’am.”
Fuck. Thank you all to hell, Chang.
I tried to keep my face neutral, stifling the surge of irritation roiling around in my gut.
“Sit down, Chang.” Perry’s voice was flat as she stepped across the stage and singled me out with a piercing glare. “Cadet Alvarez.”
I stood and came to attention, perhaps not as eager and energetic as the others had been.
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” Just as loud, though.
“Tell me, Cadet Alvarez,” she went on, “what exactly gave you the idea that you had the authority to put Cadet Chang in command of the platoon?”
“Ma’am,” I said, my words harsh and clipped off, not because I was trying to sound angry but more because it was the only way to hide my disgust, “the platoon was in immediate danger of becoming combat ineffective. No one was stepping forward to take command. I knew the First squad leader was too busy fighting for his own life up front to be able to control the rest of the platoon and I am not as familiar with Second and Third squad’s personnel as I am with my own. Ma’am.”
“In other words, Cadet Alvarez,” Perry said, a growling undertone in her voice, “you decided that you knew better who should be running the platoon than the chain of command, did you not?”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but I was fairly certain that whatever I said was going to land me in deep shit, so I figured I might as well be honest.
“Ma’am, I believed we didn’t have the time to waste waiting for someone to step up, ma’am.”
“And you didn’t think that the chain of command is there for a reason, Cadet Alvarez?” Her eyebrow shot up, as if in disbelief. “You didn’t consider the chaos and destruction that could result from ignoring it?”
“Ma’am, I did consider it, ma’am. Marines were dying in the simulation, and I have always been taught since Armor School to treat simulations the same way I would treat actual combat, ma’am.”
I’d probably said too much, I knew that already. I should have just admitted to being wrong no matter how I actually felt about it and let her have her way. That was the lesson I should have learned in Boot Camp and Armor School. But dammit, this was supposed to be different. We were supposed to be learning how to be leaders, how to make these sorts of decisions.
“These exercises are meant to teach you, Cadet,” Perry told me, strained patience grating like metal on metal in her tone. “They are lessons you’re supposed to learn, each about a different subject, and this subject was the chain of command. If you can’t accept the nature of our learning process, I’m sure we’ll be happy to send you back to your unit until you’ve matured enough to learn how to obey instructions. Is that what you want?”
“Ma’am, no ma’am!” I barked, giving in to the inevitable. I was about to sit back down, but one last rebellious spark lit up behind my eyes. “Ma’am, may I ask a question, ma’am?”
Perry didn’t want to let me, but she didn’t have any good reason not to and she answered through gritted teeth.
“What is it, Cadet Alvarez?”
“Should the platoon have had the point man or maybe a buddy team up front a couple hundred meters to scout the end of the canyon, ma’am?”
“What does Marine doctrine state?” she asked by way of a reply. She was phrasing it that way on purpose, trying to make it sound like an attempt to make sure I knew doctrine, but I had the sense she was asking because she had no idea.
“According to what I was taught in Armor school, ma’am, it’s generally advised, but it’s also command discretion in a situation where avoiding detection is vital. I was just wondering what you think we should have done, ma’am?”
I sat down, feeling Gunny Reznick’s glare from the other side of the room. She knew what I was doing, even if Perry didn’t. Perry had tried to make me look like a reckless know-it-all, a Blue Falcon out to undermine the other cadets. I was returning the favor by putting her on the spot, and if she really knew as little as I suspected about combat…
“It wasn’t important in this exercise,” she said, a note of huff in her voice, her lips pursing in a narrowly-aborted pout. “This is about leadership.”
I said nothing, but the look in her eyes said everything.
“This is, I believe,” Freddy told me, not looking up from polishing his boots, “the most worthless, useless training I have ever had.”
I nodded, not bothering to comment. Rage burned in my chest and I took it out on the uppers of my combat boots. Maybe if I wore a hole in the damned things, they’d give up on the stupid-ass tradition of making us shine them every single day. As stupid as it was, though, it had nothing on the simulator training we’d been doing.
“Man, you said it,” Fuentes piped up from the bunk across from us, though I don’t believe Freddy had meant to include him in the conversation.
Fuentes was sprawled out on the floor, legs hanging out in the middle of the aisle between the bunks in a way that was sure to get him dropped for pushups if Gunny Reznick popped in for a check…which would, of course, get me in trouble.
“I thought that first simulator run was lame, first-week-of-Armor-school shit, but the last couple were even worse.” He sputtered something between a laugh and a grunt of disgust. “Fuck, man, how many deserts we gonna run through with nothing in them? Shit, you seen a lot of combat, Jefe, how much has been running through the fucking desert?”
Jefe was what he’d started calling me ever since I’d been made cadet platoon leader, and I was fairly certain he didn’t mean it in an affectionate way.
“I think maybe once,” I admitted. I laughed without humor. “I never thought I’d get to the point where I’d been on so many different worlds, I couldn’t even remember them all.”
“Long way from the streets back home, huh, Jefe?” Fuentes cackled. “Not some outsider scrambling around trying to beg a place to sleep, anymore.”
“I don’t think about that much anymore, Fuentes.” I shook my head, not willing to take the bait. “That was someone else’s life, and I didn’t miss it the second I left it behind.” I eyed him with a curious tilt of my head. “What about you? You miss being one of the old gang, throwing your weight around in the ‘hood, and getting all the women you wanted?”
“Shit no, man! I wasn’t no fucking shot-caller! I was the kid they sent to do the shit no one else wanted to do. I spent a shitload of time in juvenile confinement, just waiting for the day I did something bad enough they’d finally throw me into the Freezer.”
The Freezer was what the gangbangers called punitive hibernation. Some of them had even come back from it, returning right back to the gang, stepping in as if nothing had changed because nothing ever did in the Underground.
“What’d you get pegged for?” I asked him, honestly curious.
“You don’t strike me as a guy who would have volunteered in a fit of patriotism.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Man, if I was still in the gang, I’d think you was an undercover cop. Why you talk so fancy for a streetboy?”
“My mom thought learning was important.” I let my eyes drop from him back to the boot top I’d been working on, buffing out one last scrape. “And the library was always open if I wanted a place to sit somewhere comfortable and plug into a ViR education program.”
“What happened to your mom?” Freddy asked.
I glanced up sharply but forced my eyes back to the boot. It wasn’t a question you’d ask someone if you were from the Underground, but I knew he wasn’t. He was a surface dweller and bad things didn’t happen to people he knew.
“We lived in Tijuana,” I said, and that should have been enough explanation if he’d known anything about the place.
“People still live there?” Fuentes asked, dead serious. I wasn’t shocked. Most people in Trans Angeles, even in the Underground, had never heard of it.
“It’s in old Mexico,” I continued. “The country doesn’t exist anymore, and most of the cities are in ruins, but people still live in parts of them.” I spat on my boot top and polished it away. “And if you think the gangs in the Underground were rough, you should try living with the cartels in Tijuana. Mom wanted me to learn because she wanted me to be able to survive, and Tijuana is a hard place to survive. Mom took a bullet standing right next to me on our front steps, a stray shot from two guys trying to kill each other over money.”
Freddy gasped. I don’t know if I’d ever heard a man gasp before. His right hand moved a centimeter toward me and stopped, as if he’d felt an urge to put a comforting hand on my shoulder but reconsidered.
“And you know, that was the final straw for Dad. He put me and my brother in a gas-powered car someone had fabricated off old specs and tried to take us to Trans Angeles because he heard they’d take anyone who came. Lots of people try to make that trip, though, and the reason most never get there is the bandits in the desert. They got us, too. I hid in the trunk until they left, until they’d killed my father and older brother and took everything we had, which wasn’t much. Then I started walking across the desert and would have died if a maintenance tech hadn’t stumbled across me.”
“Jesus Christo,” Fuentes murmured, crossing himself. I chuckled. For some reason, the Catholic reflex struck me as funny coming from him. “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should have.”
I put the polishing cloth down, judging the boot with a critical eye. It was as good as I could get it. Whether Gunny Reznick agreed, I couldn’t be sure.
“You’re right about the simulator missions, though,” I told Freddy. “They’re worse than useless, they’re fucking dangerous. They’re going to send a bunch of new platoon leaders out there thinking they know how to command, and when everything goes to shit, like it always does, maybe their platoon sergeant will have it together enough to pull their asses out of the fire but maybe they won’t. Hell, I could come up with a better set of simulation parameters just from….”
I realized I’d left my mouth hanging open and I closed it before something flew in.
“What?” Fuentes asked, shaking his head.
I stuffed my polishing gear and my boots in my locker and jumped to my feet. My fatigue blouse was hanging on the aluminum frame of the bunk and I grabbed it and my cap and started toward the door.
“I’ll be right back,” I told them.
Lt. Manzer’s office was in the same building as our barracks, but it had to be accessed from the exterior, mostly, I suppose, so they didn’t have to worry about cadets sneaking in there at night. I departed our blessed island of air conditioning and ventured out into the blast furnace of a Tartarus summer, sweat beading on my forehead and the small of my back almost immediately. I kept my eye out for officers or, worse, training NCOs, but it was mid-afternoon on one of our rare days off and they were all off doing whatever training NCOs had to do to keep sane.
Manzer’s door was closed and I hesitated for just a moment before I knocked on it, wondering how much trouble I was going to get in for not going through Reznick first before talking to him.
“Come in.” Manzer didn’t quite have the impatient snap of command like Covington. His invitation was almost friendly.
I pulled the door open and stepped into a position of attention, saluting before I’d had so much as a chance to take a glance at the interior of the office.
“Close the door behind you,” Manzer said, his tone plaintive and nearly whining, but his return salute crisp and textbook sharp.
“Yes, sir.” I got the door with one hand and pulled off my cover—my cap. The Marines call it a “cover,” like my head was some sort of preserves jar and my brains would go bad if I left the top off.
It was blissfully cool in Manzer’s tiny office, probably due to the small space the system had to work on. The room was plain white and unadorned, the only decoration on the walls a certificate of commissioning from the Commonwealth Service Academy back on Earth. The desk was metal and must have been older than Tartarus base. It looked as if the Marines had salvaged it from some ancient American military base after the Sino-Russian War and brought it to Inferno out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia.
“Cadet Alvarez,” Manzer said, “I don’t recall Gunnery Sgt. Reznick informing me of any scheduled appointment to speak with you.”
“No, sir,” I admitted. “I do not know where Gunnery Sgt. Reznick is, sir. But I had something important I wanted to ask you, sir, something you would have to okay.”
Manzer leaned back in his chair, which, from the incessant squeaking, had to have been just as old as the desk. He rested his chin on his chest and regarded me with skepticism in his eyes.
“All right,” he said, finally. “Tell me.” He sighed. “And at ease.”
“Sir,” I said, hands clasping behind my back, “I wondered if I might program a few scenarios into the simulator pods that the platoon could run on our own time.”
“Why?” He shook his head. “What would you want to do that for?”
“Sir, I’m concerned that the scenarios we’re running in training are too simplistic and dumbed-down to realistically reflect combat.”
“Major Brena,” Manzer told me, mouth twisting in a scowl, “and the commandants for the other OCS training battalions have made the decision that the simulations should be as simple as possible to keep the trainees from being distracted or confused.” He seemed pissed off, but I wasn’t sure if it was with me.
“Do any of the battalion commanders have actual combat experience, sir?”
“No.” Now the bitterness was plain to see and I knew it wasn’t my suggestion or my questions that had upset him. “Not a one of them.”
“Sir, I’ve never been an officer,” I said, approaching the subject like I would unexploded enemy ordnance, checking out every side before I took a step closer. “But I had to lead a platoon in combat once. I had to because the platoon leader sacrificed herself to save us, and the platoon sergeant was badly injured. I wound up almost getting killed myself and I got to tell you, sir, I didn’t know at the time how the hell I would have handled that mission, how I would have been able to do anything to get us all out of it alive. I still don’t.”
I sagged just slightly, a feeling like walking back out into the heat from the air conditioning.
“Coming here wasn’t my idea. My company commander sent me and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be a platoon leader. I’m good in a Vigilante. Better than anyone I’ve ever run into, if I’m being honest, sir. I wanted to stay with my squad, with my friends, to do what I could to keep them alive. But Captain Covington had a different idea for me. He thought the kind of talent I had could be used to lead others, to teach them to see what I see and think like I think. I have my doubts, but I owe my platoon leader, Lt. Ackley, a debt I can’
t pay any other way.”
“And it has to start right here. If I just do what I have to do in order to graduate OCS, get my butterbar and wash my hands of the place, I won’t be paying her back for the lessons she taught me. I have to try to make sure I try to help everyone I can who leaves here as an officer to know what they’re going to face.”
Manzer stared at me for so long, I was convinced he was debating whether to simply throw me out on my ear, or actually call the MPs and have me hauled away. But when he moved, it was slow, measured, and deliberate.
“This can only be on your free time,” he said.
I blinked, certain I’d misunderstood, but he kept on.
“And you can’t touch the scenarios reserved for training. This will have to be a self-contained module you can insert and take out completely. And I have to be there when you use it. Don’t involve Gunny Reznick, just come get me yourself.”
I nodded, wondering if he was concerned that Reznick might report the violation to higher authority, or concerned that she wouldn’t and not wanting her to get in trouble.
“Yes, sir,” I said, realizing the nod might be taken as disrespectful.
“I’ll give you an extra hour after lights-out each night to construct the scenarios. I’ll come get you. Don’t tell anyone about this until I’ve had the chance to review what you’ve done.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, sucking in a deep breath as if I’d been holding it the whole time. “Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Alvarez.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I get the feeling I’m making a huge mistake.”
4
“Contact right!” Fuentes yelled.
Tahni High Guard battlesuits swarmed from the underground bunker like rats deserting a demolished building, some taking flight and arcing across the 1200 meters between us, other sprinting headlong, straight into our front lines.
“Launch missiles by rank!” I snapped, operating my own suit from instinct, not thinking about what I was doing, only what I wanted the others to do. “Staggered fire, maintain the volley until you’re dry! Keep your formation, don’t fucking panic!”